I finished reading Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health by L. Ron Hubbard. I got the book from Open Library. I didn’t buy the book.
I’m not going to do a summary of this book. Instead, I’m going to explain why I read this book. No, I’m haven’t gone to the dark side to be a Scientologist. I love learning about cults and bible prophecy. I have done some research on Scientology before and read Leah Remini’s book and Lawrence Wright’s book. I had been debating on whether to read Dianetics or not. Then recently Scientology the cult began a network on DirectTV in response to Leah Remini’s show. I watched a few shows on their network. That’s when I decided to read the book. I wanted to see what he actually said.
A lot of what he said was BS. He made wild claims that Dianetics is a cure-all. Of course, that is one of the reasons he went bankrupt. I think another reason he went bankrupt was that a doctor left the foundation and wrote a book how Dianetics doesn’t work. ( I would love to read that book, but I would have to buy it.) Some of the book did make sense. I think it may help people with PTSD. A guy I knew went crazy when a train went by because his mother was killed on a train track. I think Dianetics may help him too.
He kept saying Dianetics wasn’t hypnotism in the first half of the book. I just couldn’t figure out how you could get to the unconscious part of the mind without hypnotism. Then when I got the therapy part, it sounds like hypnotism to me. Then he says it’s similar to hypnotism, you aren’t put to sleep. Just in reverie which is a dream-like state. (Reverie is new tv show which is good by the way. It’s about a woman who gets people out of the dream-like state.)
I don’t know if he originally wanted to help people or not. He shouldn’t have made the wild claims if he did. And he really should haven’t made it into a religion/cult if he really wanted to help people. I don’t see how learning about Xenu (which don’t exist) is helping people. The version of the book I read was the 1985 version. At the back of the book, it doesn’t mention anything about Scientology. It did give “testimonies” of people saying Dianetics helped them. But a lot of the names of the people weren’t given.
Now I’m reading Dark Tower 5: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King.
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